Rapture
Rapture
A series of 40 paintings/ Oil on Canvas
The Hollywood dream machine generated countless movies in the 20th century intended to entrance huge audiences. Every artifice and artistic talent was used to create perfect images and ambience. This affected ordinary life and conditioned expectations of glamour, romance and drama throughout western culture and beyond.
These paintings update ideas of romance and ecstasy originally created for the 'Silver Screen'. They are not intended as portraits of movie stars, but rather capture our fleeting dream-like intensity in rapture and the psychological dominant power of our own desires.
Detail - 'Ecstasy' 170 x 196 cm
Name Paintings
Name Paintings
A series of 78 paintings/ Oil on Canvas
A large series of work developed over the past few years that has examined the making of paintings in relation to the human state.
These small figure paintings are not portraits of anyone in particular. They display the quirkiness and the idiosyncrasies of the whole human state along with its vulnerability, humour and irrepressible need for exuberance and joyfulness.
They can be seen as 'stupid' but even this view enables you to enter the picture and recognize the abstract shapes and tags that exist in this liminal world. You are left free to interpret them as you wish and let the paintings do the work presenting its ephemeral landscapes as portraits, abstraction and decoration.
'Dolly' 40 x 50 cm
Cut Outs
'Waiting' 76 x 102 cm
Cut Outs
A series of 28 paintings/ Oil on canvas
This series uses 'Film Noir' as inspirational subject matter. Film Noir was synonymous with existential thinking and the experience of being human. It came out of depression of 1930’s America and demonstrated challenges on society’s thinking. The movies showed a new world devoid of pre- ordained meaning or justice. They showed the struggle of people to find personal meaning in an absurd world. The “Cut Out’s” series focusses our attention on this world through small windows and creates mirrors for feelings and situations that we recognise today. We see people that are flawed and morally questionable but we also see expressions and attitudes of characters we not only recognise in iconic film stars but in ourselves and those around us. These cut out windows frame and colour the painted images and entrap the psychological mood in a moment.
Picture Faces
Picture Faces
A series of 15 paintings/ Oil on canvas
A face is probably the first thing we learn to recognise -
even a very young child can identify a wobbly representation of a face. When we see a smiley face, we get the message and are able to relax to pick up subtler aspects of the information in front of us. Similarly, these “Picture Faces” enable us to drop our guard and interpret the painting for what it is. The lines and shapes create a breathing space and freedom to enjoy the abstraction. To enable the image to float, the canvases are not stretched to fixed structures but lightly pinned to wooden strips.
'Sonya' 110 x 125 cm
Hello
'Lost Girl' 102 x 114 cm
Hello
A series of 40 paintings / Oil on canvas
The joyous smile has become the emblem of celebrity culture. It says, 'I am happy, I am successful. I am always seen at the right places'. It becomes the smile that the rest of us, non-celebrities, aspire to in family photos or in glamourous selfies. If we don’t, we are seen as sad or ‘have a problem’. Serious photo sessions are generally reserved for high status people or elegant fashion models.
The “Hello” series of paintings uses this contemporary celebrity scene. The abstracted faces or forest of shapes give way to the private person caught up in their own thoughts. In this landscape, threads and chains of ideas meet up or fizzle out. The network of colours stay mobile - caught in a net.
The Drawing Collection
The Drawing Collection
This is a large collection of drawings that have been created from different stimuli and influences including film, literature and philosophy. They are detailed pencil drawings on hand- made paper or on canvas. The larger works range from 44 x 50 cm in size to 23 x 28 cm.
They exist as separate works of art, distinct from the recent series of paintings but have been developed alongside them. Each 'mise en scene' or figure drawing pulls you into examining the mood and the quixotic nature of these reveries. This detailed work supplies endless interest and fascination.
'Sleeping in the Evening' 44 x 50 cm
Film Noir
Film Noir
The latest group of paintings depicting images from film noir is a continuation of etchings made in the 1960's. These are made using pencil and oil paint on canvas and board. These pictures are intentionally small in order to achieve an intensity of depiction. They appropriate the film stills as a way of fixing moments which have meaning far beyond their particular situation. This allows the interpretation to be open and personal. The finished images work as self referential objects in their own right with intonations of other possible interpretations.